   ✉

Dark Tales

Filter by:

Sort by:

Dark Tales is an independent artisan perfume house based in Uppsala, Sweden, founded by perfumer and creative director Arina P. Franzén.

Gothic, alternative and atmospheric, Dark Tales creates fragrances as places, stories and scenes to enter. The brand is inspired by dark history, old literature, forgotten rooms, legends, rituals and the strange beauty of the past.

Each fragrance has its own name, image, mood and story. The perfume, label, packaging and atmosphere around it are all part of the same world. Dark Tales is artisan perfumery for those who seek character, depth and imagination — fragrances made not only to smell beautiful, but to evoke, transport and make the invisible feel almost tangible.

The Nose: Arina Franzén

My name is Arina P. Franzén, and I am the perfumer, founder, and creative director behind several independent perfume houses. Each of them has its own world, its own language, and its own way of approaching scent.

Before perfumery, there was storytelling.

My background is in history, psychology, and biographical writing. I was fascinated by people, by memory, by the emotional weight of objects and places, by the way the past never truly disappears. As a writer-biographer, I learned to preserve lives through words. But at some point, words were no longer enough.

Some things are too atmospheric to describe directly.
Some memories do not speak.
They smell.

I began creating perfumes in 2019, first as a self-taught perfumer, then through further study and certification at the Natural Perfume Academy. What started as an intimate creative practice gradually became a larger olfactory universe: a collection of perfume houses, each exploring a different side of scent, memory, craft, and imagination.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY:
Umar Setiawan